Lot 471 R

„Unlike streets in Struth`s cityscapes, the spatial coordinates of his portraits, the expanse of his landscapes or the lack of depth in his pictures of flowers, the jungle hardly offers any sense of perspective and thus depth. Without hierarchically structuring the picture, its entire surface is crisscrossed all over and covered by plant forms – reminiscent of the lines in paintings by Jackson Pollock or Brice Marden. And yet each thicket allows us to sound out the depths. […] This paradise is located neither in the jungle nor behind it: it reveals itself when we look through the foliage. In these photographs, the forests are no longer threatening, the return of the repressed, but the conscious location of dedication. The dense web of branches becomes a membrane of contemplation, a semi-transparent mirror in which we are returned to ourselves but through which we can move, if not into another world then at least in order to arrive changed beside ourselves.” (cited after Hans Rudolf Reust, A Paradise of Jungles, in: Ingo Hartmann/Hans Rudolf Reust, Thomas Struth. New Pictures from Paradies, exhib.cat. Universitat Salamanca, Centro de Fotografia et al., Munich 2002, n.pag.)